


For We Who Grew Up Tall And Proud

by codefiant



Series: Hammer to Fall [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cancer, Culture Shock, Discussion of Infertility, Dystopia, Eugenics, Gen, Genetic Disorders & Abnormalities, Happy Ending, Post-Nuclear War, Science Fiction, Social Stratification, acceptance of death, identification tattoos, jaded teenagers, medical neglect, mention of euthanasia, no actual death, not an au, radiation, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7870426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codefiant/pseuds/codefiant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We need to talk,” Keith started out. He limped over and sat down on the couch. He bent down and pushed up his pants leg to reveal petechiae. “About this.”</p><p>There wasn't an outburst. They all knew it would happen eventually. “I'll keep piloting Red for as long as I can, but we need to start looking for a new Red Paladin.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	For We Who Grew Up Tall And Proud

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the backstory/setup of _Golion_. I'm pretty sure writing this puts me in the running for Most Terrible Person. Look on my works ye mighty and despair. Title is from Queen's "Hammer To Fall".

Keith limped into the mess hall. Hunk gave him a worried look. “You okay?”

Keith looked down at his leg. It could easily be a training injury. “Maybe,” he answered.

Hunk continued to look worried. He knew the signs. They all knew the signs.

* * *

A week later, Keith knew the answer to Hunk's question. He found the rest of the Paladins sitting on the couches in the lounge. “We need to talk,” he started out.

Everyone looked at him. “About what?” Shiro asked.

Keith limped over and sat down on a couch. He bent down and pushed up his pants leg to reveal petechiae. “About this.” There wasn't an outburst. They all knew it would happen eventually. “I'll keep piloting Red for as long as I can, but we need to start looking for a new Red Paladin.”

Pidge moved over and curled up against him. “You're going to opt out?”

Keith's only answer was taking off one of his gloves to reveal the letters tattooed on the back of his hand. _DNT_.

“Dude, I'm pretty sure stupid Earth rules don't apply here, radie or not,” Lance argued.

Keith put the glove back on. “I'd just be prolonging the inevitable. I'm a Level Ten. My parents were DNT too. I know how this is going to end. Of us five, I already knew I would probably be the first.”

“That doesn't mean you have to just roll over and take it. Even if medical supplies were limited, there's not exactly a lottery out here.”

“Stop it, Lance,” Keith said, quieter. “I made my peace with it a long time ago. I accept my gene status. Now or later, I'm going to die young.”

Lance opened his mouth to argue some more, but Shiro cut him off. “He's right Lance. I thought you said your mother was a geneticist. You should know better than to argue with someone opting out.”

“Keith's just as much of a radie as me. I see no reason to just give up when there are options.”

Keith gave him a deadpan stare. “Unless your morning routine includes concealer on a DNT tattoo, you're a bit more healthy than me.”

“Unlike your geneticist, my mom's cool. She doesn't take stupid Earth rules lying down.”

Suddenly everyone was staring at Lance. “Are you telling me,” Pidge started, “That your mother _faked your gene profile_?”

“What?” Hunk asked. “I thought you told me everything!”

“I tell you everything that doesn't involve flagrantly breaking the law. Officially I'm a Level Six, but yeah, I'm actually a Ten.”

“Dude, what was even the point of that?” Keith asked. “That lasts until you apply for a lottery position and they retest you, and then you both get _arrested_.”

Lance gave him finger guns. “Not if I opt out! And in the meantime I get to avoid DNT laws, like mandatory sterilization.”

“That's reckless endangerment of a child!”

“Only if there is a child, which there isn't.”

“Legally speaking it's still-”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Lance cut Pidge off, “I like my sex drive just fine thank you very much.”

Shiro rested his face in his flesh hand. “So to summarize, Lance, you are breaking every gene law on the books.”

“Well I've never dated anyone under a Level Six, so there is one I haven't broken.”

Shiro sighed, and looked Keith straight in the eye. “While I respect your decision, you do have options out here. Are you sure you want to opt out?”

Keith nodded. “Yes.”

* * *

After the battle Allura was waiting for them all in the lounge, hands on her hips. “Keith, the rest of the team could have handled this without you. Next time you feel like vomiting all over your cockpit, please stay in the Castle.” Her angry look softened. “You look terrible. You can't keep pushing yourself like this. You need rest to get better.”

Keith waved her off as he collapsed onto the couch, breathing carefully. “I can still fly, nausea notwithstanding, and we haven't found a new Red Paladin yet.”

Allura froze abruptly. “We haven't _what_?”

The five Paladins ended up trading looks with each other. “Oh.”

“We didn't, uh...”

“I didn't anyway.”

“I forgot that aliens probably can't tell.”

“'Cause we can all tell.”

“Probably should have told them anyway.”

“Probably.”

“I'm a Level Ten radie,” Keith informed Allura. “DNT.”

Allura blinked. “I'm sure those words mean something to you, but not to me.”

“I have cancer. Leukemia.”

“ _WHAT?_ ” Allura was suddenly in his face, and Keith was sure that if he didn't look as bad as he felt she would be shaking him by the shoulders. “We have healing pods for that! What would possess you to just keep this to yourself?” She turned on the other four Paladins. “And you _knew_ about this and didn't say anything? You were just going to let him _die_?”

Shiro shrugged. “Lance pointed out that Earth laws don't apply out here, but Keith still opted out. Arguing with him would be extremely offensive.” He side-eyed Lance as he said that last bit.

Allura looked between Keith and the other Paladins rapidly, as if she couldn't decide who she was angrier at. “Arguing with someone who refuses medical treatment is _offensive_? _Earth laws_?”

“On Earth it's illegal for me to get cancer treatment,” Keith explained. “It'll just come back, sooner rather than later. Supplies are limited to healthier people. Level Ten radie, DNT. The radiation damage to my genes is classified as Level Ten, therefore Do Not Treat.”

Allura pinched the bridge of her nose. “I have so many questions, and no idea where to start. There are enough earthlings with radiation damage to their genes that there's a _scale_? There's enough of a shortage of cancer treatment supplies that it's _illegal_ for some people to get treatment? The five of you without any medical tests could recognize not only that Keith has cancer, but what _kind_ of cancer? And you didn't argue with Keith because it's _offensive_?”

“Well, yeah,” Pidge said. “Someone opting out means someone else getting treatment. If they want to opt out for any reason, then you're arguing that they should get treatment despite their reservations that could go to someone else. It's really offensive, unless they're a low level like a Two or a Three and have a good prognosis. It's illegal for Zeroes and Ones to opt out.”

Keith gingerly wrapped his arms around his torso and grumbled, “Zeroes are propaganda. They just tell us they exist to keep our hopes up. Everyone on Earth has radiation damage.”

“ _What. Happened. On. Your. Planet?_ ”

She was met with shuffling feet and mumbling. Finally Shiro moved to the couch and sat down. “We're going to be here for a while.” The other Paladins and Allura followed suit. Shiro coughed, clearing his throat. “There was... a war,” he started. “I'm the only one old enough to remember it. Pidge wasn't even born yet. It was a big war. The biggest war. Then, someone set off an atomic bomb. No one knows how many were detonated all together, too many records were destroyed, but... it was a lot. Earth is... a mess, now. That's why we have such an intense space program. There's still some safe places, which is where most people live now, but everyone's too terrified to _not_ try to find a way off planet.”

“Everyone is trained to recognize different kinds of cancer,” Hunk said. “The sooner you recognize it the sooner you can get into the lottery for treatment, though the higher level you are the less likely you'll be to get treatment.”

“Radies are anyone Level Six or higher,” Pidge explained. “It's extremely rare for radies to get treatment. Most radies just opt out from the get go, and a lot of them go for the injection as soon as they can't work anymore. Uh, euthanasia,” she translated. “Me and Hunk aren't radies, but Lance, Keith, and Shiro are.”

“Pidge and Hunk have a chance to live to fifty,” Shiro said, “But Lance and Keith are both DNT and I'm unlikely to ever see the inside of a cancer ward.” He smiled softly. “Stop looking at us like that Princess. This is our world. We're used to it. We've all lost many friends and relatives, and someday it will be our turn. That's just the way it is on Earth now.”

Allura met his gaze for a moment, then stood abruptly. “I refuse to allow you five to accept this as your fate. You are the Paladins of Voltron and the galaxy needs you, and as a princess of the Castle of Lions it is my duty to make sure you are fit and healthy. You,” she pointed at Keith, “Will get into a healing pod. And when your cancer is in remission you will all get into healing pods for gene therapy. Ideally the computer would have multiple entirely healthy samples of DNA to work from, but unless the exact same strands of all your DNA is damaged it will be able to work with what it has. You will probably not be fully healed, but you will be better.” She angrily yet carefully pulled Keith up from the couch. “And if _any_ of you ever decide to not tell me about a _serious medical condition_ again, it's you, me, and the training deck as soon as you're out of the healing pod.”

* * *

Keith sat on the floor of the observation deck, looking out into space. He turned his head when he heard footsteps behind him. “Oh, it's you. How did your sparring with Allura go?”

Shiro settled tenderly down beside him. “I got my ass handed to me.”

“I still can't believe that you decided to try and hide lung cancer from us. At least I told everyone.”

Shiro pointed a thumb at himself. “Team leader.”

“That's just more of a reason to not opt out and get treatment.”

Shiro shook his head. “It was already my second bout.” At Keith's questioning look he flexed his metal hand. “An advanced case of melanoma. The Druids decided to take the blunt approach. Black and I had already decided that Allura would take my place.”

“Still, you at least should have said something after Allura declared she was going to beat up everyone who _didn't_ say something.”

Silence fell between them. Shiro took the chance to look over Keith. He still looked pretty bad, but he was clearly feeling better. There were bags under his eyes and he was skinnier than he had been before the leukemia set in, but there was a relaxed ease to his movements and he no longer had the look of one facing death.

Shiro looked out to the stars. Keith broke the silence. “I'm not DNT anymore.”

“No you're not. Although,” Shiro added, “It would have been nice if Allura had warned us ahead of time that the computer would resort to chimerism in lieu of healthy samples.”

“Don't remind me. I left as soon as Lance said 'space cousins'. I don't think he understands how chimerism works.”

“I think he knows exactly how chimerism works,” Shiro said. “It'll just take him a while to figure out how to not live day to day.”

Keith snorted. “If ever.” In hindsight, he should have guessed that Lance was a high level radie. He stared up at the stars. “I have a future now.”

“Yeah. Think about what you're going to do with it yet?”

Keith shook his head. “No. I never... I never allowed myself to think about it before. I was going to fly for the Garrison until I died. And then I got kicked out, had it put on my record, and hiding out in that shack in the desert was the only way to avoid being sent to work in the wastelands. I felt so selfish about that.” His eyes grew watery. “I want a family, I think. My parents and I were the only survivors of ours, and they didn't survive very long. It would be nice to have a big family. Like Lance's. How the hell did he manage that anyway?”

“According to Hunk, a lot of them are adopted. And not just the kids. His grandmother isn't actually related to any of them. They clumped together while everyone was still living in fallout shelters, and then they just stayed that way.”

“I want a proper family though. Me, someone else, and kids. _My_ kids.”

“There will be plenty of atomic orphans for a long while yet Keith.”

“You don't-”

Shiro cut him off with a firm arm around his shoulders. “I _do_ understand. But neither of us can hold our breaths hoping for a miracle.”

“You...?”

Shiro nodded. “Radiation. Maybe the healing pod fixed it, but I'm not getting my hopes up. We're humans. We've gotten very good at being pessimistic.”

“Realistic, you mean.”

“No, definitely pessimistic.” Shiro smiled. “Did I ever tell you that I saw a real lion at the zoo when I was little?”

“What? No way. You must be one of the youngest people to ever see a real lion. How big was it? Did it roar?”

Shiro chuckled. “There was a whole pride of them, a male and four females. They were the size of very large dogs I think, I was very young, only cat shaped. They were all just on their rock, lazing in a big pile in the sun. Having a nice cat nap.”

“There were other animals too, right? Tell me about them.”

“You're going to make me regret telling you I remember going to the zoo, aren't you?”

“Shiro, please.”

“All right. The aviary was my favorite part...”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr: codefiant.tumblr.com


End file.
